Posts Tagged ‘hour’

Day Off - Sort of
A late Ramblings this week as I decided to stay offline last week. It was a long week and I was playing all weekend. It has been a while since I last took more than 24 hours off a computer, so that is a big feat for me.

HP Tech Forum

I had a fun time talking and working with Andy McCaskey and Kara Karsten with SDRNews. We had such a blast. We also put forward the mobile interview booth rig. We call it the “MacGyver” rig. Nonetheless, it was connected to uStream and we were able to conduct a few interviews for the event. Check out all the info on the Twitter log at #HPTF.

Great to meet some new bloggers: Shane Pitman of Neowin, John Obeto of AbsoluteWindows. We had a great week along with Halley, Tom, Calvin and Rebecca from HP and Buzzcorps.

Fryes at Vegas

Also got to go to Vegas again. While we didn’t run around town as much as with CES (everything was contained in Mandalay Bay), we did venture out to go to Fryes. It’s actually my first time at Fryes and I was pretty impressed. Of course, it was Vegas, so the store has a big slot machine up in it’s store front and stacks of coins as barrier posts. The inside was very big and complete. Andy had to get a new scratch drive since the one he brought died. We got what we needed and headed back to the safe Mandalay Bay

Mandalay Bay

Wow. This is a city contained in a building. That is, if you have the money for it. My room – which I call the “Bob Newhart” room – was decked with all the amenities. TV in the bedroom and the bathroom. You can connect an external device easily and be watching a movie while soaking in the tub.

The casino area was always hoppin. There were bands both on the “Sushi Pop” and “House of Blues” stages. Restaurants all over the building. A small walk and you are at “theHotel”. They even have their own beach – where we watched the Beach Boys play a set. Well, it was a short set for me, since I had a flight to catch.

Podcast on the show floor

I had the unique opportunity to record the show from the HPTF Expo floor. It was great because I didn’t have to set up a rig, do a show, rip it down and go to another area to post. I would also like to thank Simon Calder for helping out with the show notes so I could focus on other things.

What I got out of the show

Of course, there were a lot of things I have learned from this event. I have run server rooms before, but I was a little out of touch with the current technologies. FCoE was the big one I learned about. Also building a server is a lot different than before. Greener, more powerful and reliability were the best parts.

The Keynotes were just amazing. Learning about how these big companies are working on green technologies is amazing. Dr. Michio Kaku and his views for the future were amazing. A “Smart toilet” is definitely something to get excited about.

The Weekend

I got back to Madison at 8 AM on Friday. It was a long trip (5 hours, turned into 7 due to timezone changes). What was worse was on the trip back, I was not really impressed with the airline I flew. The one thing I noticed is they were not really friendly.

An example: We flew through a couple storm fronts during the trip. Most airlines would say “This is the Captain. We are seeing some turbulance, so please remain in your seats and buckle your belts. Thank you.”

The airline I was on? Well: “Please buckle your seatbelts”.

The airline also had screens drop from above. While I would normally invite this, I was in a evening flight. I had difficulties sleeping when something like a video monitor is playing. Of course, I didn’t pack my sleeping mask. Therefore, I was stuck watching “Confessions of a Shopoholic”. While other people loved this movie, I didn’t find it as interesting.

I got home around 9 AM, in which I proceeded to collapse on the bed for a couple hours. Woke up, caught up on some work I missed during the week, then headed off to play a show. Since it was out of town, I had to pack for another night away from home.

Band Gigs

Saturday was a day of playing. We played a friends graduation, then it was up to the Dells for our regular show at the Baja bar. There were 4 different Bachelorette parties that night and they were not in the Baja at the same time. As one party left, the next one showed up. Crazy.

New Guitar

While we were in transit to the Graduation party, we stopped at a local music store. There, I found a used Acoustic / Electric guitar. I picked it up as a spare for future shows. It needs some work to it, but not much to make it ready to play out.

Lazy Sunday? Not.

Of course, the day started out with this post. A quick breakfast, then it’s getting things ready for the week. Have to work on “Week in Tech History”, then I have to figure out how to put together the new video studio. Lots of soundproofing to do.

I suppose I should get to it. Thanks again to everyone for a great week. How do you top that?

I started a new group a couple months ago to not only get new podcasters interested, but also have existing podcasters get together and talk about different aspects. I decided that if it’s a meeting about Podcasting, it should be a podcast itself. Therefore, we recorded the first Madison Podcasters Group Podcast.

I decided that since this isn’t really a centric item and there is a lot of good information, then it will be added to the Quickcast. It will also have it’s own group, too.

The subject of the first podcast group – how easy it is to set up and make a podcast. We talk in general about setting up a mic to a computer and recording it, how much it’s going to cost you and how difficult it really is to set up a podcast.

There is some great information out of this hour. The sound is a bit ‘hummy’, I have tried to work out the noise. It is chuck full of some great material, so please bear through the hum and check out the show.

Next month’s meeting will be: How to host your podcast. 3-03-09

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (33.7MB)

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You’ve been working at your job for years. You’ve made lots of money for the company and are the most loyal employee they know of. Yet, tough times are ahead and the company decides you are one of the 10% they have to let go to stay afloat. It’s a frustrating thing to have happen, but what are you gonna do?

Now let’s flip that: You are at your job and survive the cut, but now you are in the position to take up a part of that person who was laid off.

As companies like Intel and Google are looking at trimming the fat, it makes the average consumer wonder – what will our customer experience be without 10% of the workforce?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.1MB)

Wow. It was about a year ago I asked for people to send in thoughts as to what to expect in 2008. I also made some Technology predictions. But the real question was – How far off was I?

This is actually part 1 of a 2-part story. This first part reviews the predictions I made last year and how far off I was. Part 2 will have this years predictions, including predictions from CEO’s CTO’s TechPodcasters and even a Psychic.

So without any further ado, let’s pick apart my idiocy from last year:

OLPC will have some growing pains. The first part of OLPC will be the easiest. Maintaining the machines will be the trick. Microsoft coming onboard will muddy the water, but they might be able to do things like offer a better support network to third world countries.

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You can watch the whole 24 Hour Podcast live on Dec. 20th 2008. Show starts at 11 AM EST, 10 AM CST, 6 AM HST. I will be on with Andy McCaskey at 8 PM EST, 7 PM CST, 3 PM HST. We’ll be talking CES and what we’ll be doing there. The whole day will be awesome to watch. You can watch it all here, or go to 24hrpodcast.com

The coolest thing about the LIVE SHOW is you never know who is going to show up. This week started slow, but that all changed when Jeri Ellsworth showed up. Jeri created the Commodore 64 joystick – 30 C64 games on one joystick controller.

We talked about Pinball machines and Video Arcade systems. Jeri was also building a new studio, so we talked about ways to make the room less noisey. Jeri even talked about creating a new video capture system.

We also had Art from twoguystech.com, as well as Brokenshovel and husker_fan. All in all another great show.

Hour 1 Read the rest of this entry »

This week we tried something new – we had people call into the show via Skype. We then discussed a variety of topics like Yugo, Apple, oto, Android, Google, Comcast and a lot more.

We also played a song created by some local artists – Legend on the Internet – in hour 2. We had a lot of great interaction and a lot of information passed through.

Hour 1

Hour 2
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GigaOM’s OM Malik talked with Michael Dell about the company a couple weeks back. Michael made some statements whose predictions at times were no easier than determining Nostradamus’ writings. Yet other websites interpreted it in saying that Dell is hinting on making a phone to rival iPhone. While it’s not an impossibility, will Dell get into the market or are they playing on the media to ilicit a response from the public?

The Quickcast is brought to you by Gotomeeting. Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days at GoToMeeting.com/techpodcasts. No credit card needed.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.5MB)

Podcast (quickcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:31 — 2.5MB)

It would be interesting to see how much bandwidth I go through a month. Uploading shows, ustream channel, downloading software updates and media content.  All of it legally.

There are some that decide to use their internet connection without abandon. They download movies, music and computer programs without legally paying for it. I have seen many downloading 4 to 5 items at a time, which at gigabytes at a pop, it’s a lot of data that passes through. And with programs like bittorrent, not only does it download the items, but it turns your computer into a “Seed” in which others can use to pull from.

Comcast is working on a model to cap bandwidth per month. For some it won’t be noticeable. For the internet Zealot, they might find it tougher to work and or play. Do we need bandwidth limits to control our data consumption, or are internet companies treading in areas they shouldn’t?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.2MB)

Podcast (quickcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:52 — 2.2MB)

*Updated 03-13 -08. See Below

Snafu.  Freedictionary.com defines it as “A chaotic or confused situation”. The word SNAFU is an acronym, in which most of it I cannot decode here, so I’ll fudge it a bit. Situation Normal All Fouled Up.

If you were to go through a snafu a few years ago with a company, you would most likely grumble to your friends and family and then move on – Little impact on that. However, in this day and age, a Snafu can really come back to hurt. With Social Networking rising 47 percent year to year (according to Nielsen Netratings), this can really give companies a tough time if problems arise. But still, can social networking cause a company hardship because of a single or series of transactions?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.5MB)

Podcast (quickcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:26 — 2.5MB)

Today in the Gym I was watching a report that Apple iPhone was challenging Blackberry for market share in the corporate world. I agreed with the report – Apple has a better user interface than the Blackberry, Blackberry is too expensive in their messaging systems and an iPhone looks a lot better than a Blackberry device.

But then I got to thinking about it. Is this really news? I mean, yeah – we’ve got one company trying for a niche that another company has. However what company hasn’t tried to emulate or compete with another company’s corner-hold before?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.6MB)

Podcast (quickcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:39 — 2.6MB)